I once saw the perfect girl from afar. I hesitate to call her my soul mate. I’d never met her before but when I looked at her my mind instantly assigned the word ‘perfect’ to describe her. I didn’t feel the rapid heat of lust, nor the longing, bittersweet-ness of a new crush. Instead I felt the quiet certitude that perfection brings. She wasn’t the standard definition of beauty- her ears were a hair too big, there was a small gap in her smile, and bushy eyebrows framed her eyes. Nothing that would have made her a pariah, but those traits would quietly push her out of the perfect category and into the ‘cute’ zone. But then again she wasn’t the perfect girl for everybody, just for me.

The problem is that though she was the perfect girl for me, I may not have been the perfect guy for her. The universe is strange that way. Our eyes met briefly at the subway station and I let her pass me by without saying anything at all.

I stared at the place she’d stood long after a train had claimed her and taken her away.